Hugh Hamilton

Since August last year I've been shooting a series I call Rosebud. The title comes from the film Citizen Kane, in which a journalist spends the narrative trying to find the meaning of Kane's last word "rosebud", which turns out to be Kane's childhood sled. All of us have seemingly meaningless objects we are carrying through our lives, objects that mean nothing to anyone else but symbolise a world to us. The person we once were can be found in the objects that person kept. To my friend Zoe it was the tweezers her mother gave her when she was eleven and with which she still plucks her brows to this day. To Steve Martin it was the hat he bought for his first magic act. I have just linked up with local Los Angeles charity Children of the Night to produce a book of this project for their benefit. It seemed appropriate to use people's childhood memories to help teenagers who have had their childhoods taken from them.

I shot this in August for UCLA magazine, their new women's basketball coach, Nikki Caldwell.

Like most editorial shoots, entirely driven by panic...the basketball court we'd booked was set up as a volleyball court! A mad rush around the UCLA campus to find a court and throw (I mean, request) whoever was playing off so we get the shot....of course we're surrounded by games in progress so Nikki couldn't hear a word I said!